Some Clarification

I’m amazed at the number of comments on the prior post. I wouldn’t have imagined it to be such a popular (and not necessarily in a good way) post. I feel as if I didn’t do a particularly great job of explaining what exactly happened and I wrote the post without further consulting the other eight people who are still in the guild that were in the raid (including The Mrs.). I’ll try and clarify everything today, and hopefully put this behind me and move on.

First, there were a lot of people showing empathy toward the ex-guildie because I initially stated that he wasn’t the one that dropped the second train. That point is no longer valid, as it has been confirmed by multiple people that he was. I’m not sure how the information got to me that he didn’t drop it, but it happens.

Second, there was a lot going on in whispers between The Mrs and the now ex-guildie that I didn’t know about, because she was in no emotional state to talk about it that evening, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to her before work. I won’t be giving specifics (if you want her whole side of the story, check the comments in the prior post), but if it’s bad enough to make my wife break down and cry, I think you know who I’m siding with. What we all thought was a joke kick, turned out to be much more serious. I would have known that if she and I played in the same room, but we prefer to play WoW in separate rooms.

I have since discovered that the player had been asked to cut out his behavior, which turned out to be more than the train, multiple times before he was kicked. Retrospectively, it wasn’t so much a power trip thing, but a final warning by a person who felt they had no other recourse. In the aftermath of this event, several guildies have been sharing information with me that they had previously kept to themselves, and in contrast to the many comments of “losing a valuable guild member” that I received in the last 36 or so hours, this might be the best thing for all involved, including the now ex-member.

Speaking of that, I was informed of his swift application to a highly ranked progression raiding guild on the server soon after the incident. They leave their applications public so I took a look and out of courtesy, extended a letter to their guild leader praising his quality as a player, but correcting some misinformation in the app about our guild and himself. Coincidentally, the same thing was done three months ago when he applied for our guild, and the leader of the prior guild contacted me. In the end, everything she said turned out to be true.

I’m sure some people think I’m a jerk for sending that letter, and others might even praise me for giving the other guild a heads up. Whether or not the accept him, is their call. I do wish the player the best, and I did nothing to discredit his qualifications as a player; in fact I praised his qualities as a player. I just felt that the the other leader might want to have a more accurate explanation of why he was no longer in our guild.

I try to remind people that there’s a real person behind the character on the screen, and I felt that some of the comments yesterday sent that back to me as if I didn’t understand that point. I personally feel pain and loss from this, even if it turns out to be what’s best for everyone. Bucklers is like a second family to me. We’re a close group of individuals that value having each other around more than being a successful raiding guild. In fact, without that closeness, I doubt that we’d be as successful as we are.

Flipping that back on some of the people who posted, I know that real people read and write here, and I do my very best not to tell people how to play their game, and I certainly don’t tell people how to run their guild. I have no need to justify how we do things to anyone here; I do my best to explain them though. I might have been a bit remiss in that in the first post, but I’ll do my best to clarify it here in a moment. The bottom line is passing judgement on me, my guild or even the player who left was never in the intention of that post, or any post. All I asked is if you thought he made the right decision in leaving, which now is a moot point, because there was far more to the situation that I could have possibly known at the time. My only request for comments is that people keep them constructive and not use the site as a pulpit to preach their beliefs.

In closing, I’ll try again to explain the joke gkick thing, because the backlash from the prior post makes me think that I’m failing to do Bucklers justice in my explanation. First and foremost, it’s usually officers kicking other officer alts, and even at that it happens very rarely. There are only 3 officers that I know to do it, and one of them is my brother, so I’m not likely to change the behavior. There are two designated officers who actually gkick for real. One is myself, and the other is Lyndiana, who I’m sure you’ve seen in my comments from time to time. No one is ever seriously kicked from the guild without an officer meeting. In addition, players are free to play the joke the other way and gquit for fun too. Again, this is not something that occurs often but is just something inherent to the nature of our particular guild. Just as with the gkick, they’re almost always immediately re-invited.

Are there people who don’t participate in either of these guild traditions? You bet there are, and I’m one of them. But, just like the others who share that viewpoint, we wouldn’t change the culture of our guild. It’s just part of the way our guild works, and even those of us who don’t participate see no issue with it.

If these are things that you would not do, that’s fine. I’m not asking you to. I know that my guild is a happy and active one, and I don’t intend to change anything about it without consulting them first. This is a guild we’re talking about, not best in slot gear, there is no best way for a guild to be run. I’ll defend the way we run ours until we all decide it’s time for it to end. That day, by the way, will be the last day I play WoW. To quote one of my favorite guild members, and a good friend: “If I’m not playing with Bucklers, I’m not playing at all.”

– Sam

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7 Responses to Some Clarification

Yeah, I didn’t go through all the responses from the last post, but it makes sense the judgment call you had to make. Hopefully, things can get back into focus, and you will be able bring those new rogue posts soon! =3

I wouldn’t take it as a ‘backlash’ from the reactions in regards to the /gkick thing. I think people just are giving their feedback as to how you can avoid such issues in the future.

Granted by the sounds of it, the guild is probably better or at least happier without Mr. Train, so from that side of things it has probably worked out for the best.

Far be it from me to tell you what you or your guild should do, the way I see it the whole thing was avoidable. Be it through standard guild rules, or raid conduct.

At the end of the day, online gaming creates a similar bubble that people have when they drive cars. Even the most lovely balanced person can become enraged and unpredictable at the drop of a hat. Behaving in ways they never normally would.

Oh, I forgot I was going to add this comment. Back, when level 80 Naxx was end game raid, my girlfriend would drop a train set, but people didn’t say anything too much, until I started raiding with her. Then after I pointed it out, everyone decided to speak up about their annoyance to the train set. But yeah, the train set is great, when its time to goof off, but not in a raid setting. Even if its break time in the raid, the sound from it is so annoying, which causes tension in the raid group.

Personally, anyone who makes a woman cry is on my list for a beating. That being said, while I (and I stress) personally don’t think /gkicking is a funny joke, for various reasons, I do understand why in some situations and guild cultures it can be acceptable. It just devalues it as a tool for handling the guild, if used at a joke, but that’s only my personal opinion.

As for Mr. Train and his douchebagery, it seems rather likely that he’d have been up for some disciplinary action soon anyways, possibly even a /gkick. I sincerely hope guys you won’t be put into the same situation again. That kinda drama always leaves a bad taste, and you’re probably better of without him, since you seem to be a tight knit bunch.

There’s drama that can be avoided by setting clear rules and practices, and then there’s drama that’s just waiting to happen, and all you can do is deal with it. I think this incident was more of the latter.

First let me say that our guild has a similar joke between officers. We do not do it as often as we use to, but that is probably due to the fact that we are not on as much as we use to be so we typically have functions going on.

In regards to the whole situation with the former guild member. I think it is a stand-up job to notify the other guild that he is a good player, but to also allow them to know the reason that he is no longer with your guild. I think it is only fair and would hope someone would have the decency to do the same to a former member apping for MAS.

At the end of the day being a guild leader is the best job and the worst job. It is our duty to maintain the guild according to the guild “rules” and while it is never fun to make those tough decisions, those decisions is what makes a good guild work. Hopefully the ex-member goes on and finds a home with like-minded individuals and gets to enjoy the game the way they prefer to.

I know this is way past when it was originally posted but I wanted to share a similar thing that happened in our guild a while back. While working on Vashj back in TBC we would 1shot all the other bosses and head to her the next night to start working on her for the rest of the week. One night we headed to Lurker and our resident d-bag enhancement shaman decided it would be funny to put water walking on all of the tanks right before the spout. Needless to say every single tank was KO’d and we had to start over. Our enhance shammy laughed all the way running back, pretty much until we were set back up. The guildmaster at the time warned him it wasn’t funny (which he said but we all kinda laughed at it because, hell I never would have thought of that) and that it wouldn’t be tolerated if he did it again. He said he wouldn’t. Next attempt, a couple of the tanks were water-walked again and we wiped again. The gmaster nerdraged, gkicked the member, and then asked around who did it. Of course everyone else said that they hadn’t and pointed at him.

I’ll put a little more background into the guild at this point as well. We had also had the joking gkicks going on at this point, had a rank by the title of Tool that prohibited speaking privlidges in guild chat, etc. This particular d-bag had only been demoted to tool at any point– never gkicked. He was also the type that gave criticism when no one asked for his opinion and generally did it in a poor manner (but again, we realized that was just his manner– it was his version of being funny where the officers version of being funny was the gkick and demote to tool button).

So, as I said, everyone else pointed at him, he left the guild on his other characters and checking the logs later on, we found out it was someone else that, after seeing the enh shammy get kicked, would not admit to being the one to do it. The guildmember was someone who had not been around too terribly long and didn’t quite realize that if he did it, it would be so serious a punishment since everyone used gkick as such a joke.

The enh shaman we kicked ended up going to the best alliance guild on the server, eventually transferring off and going to a top 100 world ranking guild. He was a good player with us, gear held him back a bit since we were still progressing through SSC, but heading into a guild like that he was excellent. We lost probably the best enh shaman our server had seen because people in the guild were getting confused as to what was punishment and what was joking.

I’ll also say something about your posting. Your last words in the post are “Would you have left? I don’t know that I would, but I do know that I are quite disappoint” and when people tell you they would have left and their opinion as to why, you just argue with them, which seems petty to me when you ask for their opinion. Then all your guild members coming on here to argue with people expressing their opinions which are different than yours doesn’t seem to make it seem any less juvenile. You wanted everyone to tell you that ‘haha its a joke he was nerdraging’ like you said, etc. I personally feel like it wasn’t so much a nerd rage as it could have been several other things:

1) He could have been blamed by someone else who wanted him out– since you seem to think that everyone else had a problem with him, easy way to piss him off enough to leave. Who would admit it if they did drop one and get you to cause this sort of display?

2) He decided that if you were going to stoop to the level of doing something that pissed him off when he pissed you off, he didn’t want to be in the guild either. TBH, you pretty much did exactly what he was doing with the power of a guild officer

3) He had an ego, knew people didn’t like him but liked your guild structure and competence– you hurt his ego and he knew he could do just as well somewhere else and start over with people who may not treat him as so much of a buden (since guild officers had spoken to him so much about what he was doing to tick everyone off).

I’ll let you know right now, I’m not your guildie, I actually came on here to learn a little bit about rogue play style since I’m starting to level mine again, but I saw this post and felt like I had to respond to it as well.

—————–

The above was written before reading your clarification, which again was still a while ago. Just like many have said as a response to it, it’s not a backlash. You asked for an opinion and people gave it. If you didn’t want opinions on how other people viewed his behavior or how they would have reacted to it, I wouldn’t have posted it in the first place.

If something was said that was enough to make your wife cry, your wife likely should have taken it up with the rest of the guild officers, put him on ignore, etc. I’ll tell you right now, I’m a girl who plays wow. I was the tank lead in the guild I described above. I had issues with guildmembers as well– but when I had a bad day and someone said something troubling to me, I acted like an adult and went through the guild channels. I’m hormonal like everyone else when I’m upset but I know how to keep that piece of me professional while in raids.

My final piece of advice, as someone else had said, is to establish more clear rules for discipline for guildmembers. If people view every punishment as a joke, or don’t see the joke as you do, you could just be hurting yourself and your guild more than the guildmember you end up kicking.